The Best Books I Read in 2016
Last year, I published my first annual Top Ten Books I Read list. My goal is to share with you the books that had the biggest impact on me each year.
Below are my picks for the Top 10 Books I Read in 2016. If you enjoy them, connect with me on Goodreads so we can share recommendations all year round.
Food Rules — An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan
What should I be eating?
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan asks the question “What are we eating?”. Over 450 pages, he explores how the modern diet — processed foods and factory farmed meat — is uniquely unhealthy in human history.
In his follow-up book, In Defense of Food, Pollan asks the next logical question: “If modern food is unhealthy, what should we eat instead?” The answer, at a slimmer 200 pages, is to eat as our ancestors have over thousands of years: Real food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Food Rules is the third book in Pollan’s food series. It condenses the wisdom from The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food into 64 rules for wise eating. The rules, like “Eat mostly plant, especially leaves” are simple, well explained, and easy to follow.
Good nutrition is a life hack — it makes every other part of life easier and more enjoyable. Read Food Rules and start living better.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
What is the meaning of life?
Siddhartha, like most of us, wonders about the meaning of life. He had everything — youth, good looks, and wealth. But to him, life seems pointless.
Siddhartha thinks that by giving away his possessions and studying philosophy under the Buddha, he’ll find enlightenment. He soon realizes, however, that wisdom can’t be taught but must be experienced.
Disenchanted, Siddhartha moves to the city to experience the pleasures of life — falling in love with a beautiful woman, becoming a wealthy merchant, and conceiving a child. Despite his success, Siddhartha feels empty. His luxurious lifestyle is an empty pursuit, and he’s no wiser or more fulfilled than before.
Saddened, he leaves the city life with thoughts of killing himself. Only then does Siddhartha find enlightenment.
Hesse’s Siddartha is short, easy to read, and holds your attention. If you’ve ever wondered “What’s the point of life?”, then I encourage you to read this book.
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Life is getting better — and at an accelerating rate — but why?
Life is getting better. Food availability, income, and life span are up. Disease, child mortality, and violence are down across the world. Products are getting cheaper and technology is enriching people’s lives as never before.
But why?
In the Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley explains why life is getting exponentially better. Humans have created a cycle of exchanging ideas, specializing, innovating, and exchanging again. Trade and markets allow ideas to spread, inspiring new ideas, and so on.
Read the Rational Optimist and learn why you should be optimistic that the future will be better than today.
The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
What can we learn from history?
If you look at the entire 200,000 years of human civilization, patterns emerge. Patterns appear in the desires and actions of individuals. Patterns appear in the rise and fall of groups of individuals, or societies. Finally, patterns appear in how civilization evolves from generation to generation.
Understanding these patterns, repeated throughout humanity’s history, are the key to understanding our future.
The Course of Love by Alain De Botton
How will I feel in a relationship that lasts a lifetime?
Alain De Botton is one of my favourite modern philosophers. His School of Life blog and YouTube videos tell us what philosophy has to say about modern life.
The Course of Love is De Botton’s attempt to explain love. The book explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to love under the pressures of life. De Botton uses philosophy to explain how the characters are feeling at each stage of the story. It’s insightful, complicated, and at times even uncomfortable, just like love in real life.
Read The Course of Love if you’ve ever been in a relationship and wondered “Is this feeling normal?”
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
What does an $85 billion dollar company look like at the start?
Shoe Dog is the best memoir I’ve read. Unlike most memoirs, it’s not a long arc of the founder’s life. Instead, Phil Knight relives the founding and first decade of NIKE.
The story of NIKE itself is incredible. It begins with a 24 year old Knight flying to post-WW2 Japan to become a reseller of cheap Japanese shoes. For the next 10 years, the bootstrapped startup fights for survival against a difficult supplier, risk-averse bankers, and bankruptcy.
Equally incredible is the mind (and writing) of Phil Knight. In Shoe Dog, he relives the experience of starting a company with an honesty I’ve not seen in any other memoir. Shoe Dog is full of meditations on life’s Great Questions, often with profound answers. Knight’s thoughtfulness resonated with me and made Shoe Dog a book on philosophy as much as a memoir.
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
What’s it like to start a country from scratch?
In this book, Ron Chernow tells the story of what it’s like to design a country.
If George Washington was the father of the country and James Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was the father of the American government.
In business speak, Alexander Hamilton was the first COO and CFO of the United States. He designed the Government of the newly-formed United States — a model that’s still copied by countries today. More impressive was his design of the country’s financial system. It was an innovative model that transformed America from a British colony to a manufacturing and trade powerhouse.
Government and finance might sound like they’d make for a dry read, but this book is not. Instead, it’s the story of the man who founded one of the most successful startups in history — the United States.
Striking Thoughts — Wisdom for Daily Living by Bruce Lee
How can I live well?
Most people know Bruce Lee as a famous martial artist and actor. Fewer people know that Lee was on a lifelong exploration of philsosphy. He studied hundreds of books on all types of philosophy — Western, Eastern, ancient, and modern — on a quest to evolve his thinking.
Striking Thoughts is Lee’s collection of wisdom about life and how to live it. It contains 825 thoughts, each only a few sentences long, on topics like life, love, and success.
Think of Striking Thoughts as an encyclopedia. Each entry is the best wisdom history has to offer about living well.
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
How can I defeat an opponent who knows my plans?
Last year I recommended The Three Body Problem, the first book in a sci-fi trilogy by author Cixin Liu. The second novel, The Dark Forest, is even better.
In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation that aliens will invade us — in 400 years. The aliens have instant access to all Earth’s information, exposing all our defense plans. Only the human mind remains a secret.
Our only hope of defence is the Wallfacer Project. Four men are granted enormous resources to design secret strategies to defend Earth. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer, is the one Wallfacer that the aliens want dead.
If you like game theory, you’ll love The Dark Forest.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Is it okay to do wrong for the right reasons?
Shantaram is one of those rare books that can make you rethink life from a new perspective.
The author, a bank robbing heroin addict named Gregory David Roberts, escapes from prison in Australia and flees to India. He hides out in a Bombay slum, setting up a free medical clinic to make amends for his violent past.
To survive, Roberts takes up money laundering and passport forging for tourists. It’s petty crime to pay the bills and far from the violent crime of his past. He soon attracts the attention Khader, a local crime lord come philosopher who becomes a father figure to Roberts.
One day, Roberts is arrested and sent to India’s notorious Arthur Road Prison. He’s tortured for weeks by corrupt police, narrowly escaping death when he’s bailed out by Khader.
To repay his debt, Roberts must work as a criminal in Khader’s mafia. But he faces a question: Can a good person do bad things and still be good?
Shantaram is a phenomenal novel. It’s mostly autobiographical, retelling the amazing events of Roberts’ real-life exile in India. For this reason, the novel has a vividness and realism rarely found in fiction. It’s also deeply philosophical, asking important questions about life, morality, and friendship.
Honourable Mentions
Although they didn’t make the Top 10, honourable mentions to go:
- Never Split the Difference
- Total Recall
- Starting Strength — Basic Barbell Training
- The Emperor of All Maladies — A Biography of Cancer
- Being Mortal
- Dark Money — The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
- The Deep State — The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
- Doing Good Better
